During Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s Senate confirmation hearing, Dr. Christine Blasey Ford testified to how he sexually assaulted her as a high school student. In support of Ford, Artemisia Gentileschi’s vengeful painting Judith Slaying Holofernes, ca. 1620, based on a Biblical story in which a strong-armed Judith and her maidservant behead the titular Assyrian general, was circulated on social media as a meme. Captioned with women’s empowerment hashtags, such as #SlaySisters, the artwork distilled contemporary feminist rage.

“The Un-Heroic Act: Representations of Rape in Contemporary Women’s Art in the U.S.,” a group exhibition curated by Monika Fabijanska, opened just a few weeks prior to the hearing. A work in dialogue with another painting by Gentileschi was installed in the entryway: Kathleen Gilje’s Susanna and the Elders, Restored, 1998/2018, an X-ray print on